Xorg 1.8.x branch policy?

[Peter Hutterer]

On Sat, Apr 03, 2010 at 10:41:01AM -0700, Alan Coopersmith wrote:
> Will we be following the same model as Xorg 1.7.x branches for 1.8?
> (i.e. anyone can push to -nominations, release manager pulls from that
>  branch to server-1.8-branch when doing a release/snapshot)

Sorry for the delay, I'm still working on reducing my inbox to something
sane.

As Keith already pointed out, I've volunteered to do the 1.8 stable branch
again. I think this was also mentioned on #xorg-devel and so far no
objections have been raised. If you (or anyone else of course) would like to
take over the 1.8 stable releases instead please feel free to do so.

Anyway, all that aside, business continues in part like the 1.7 series but
with a few changes to the process. The main points that I found with 1.7
were:

- 1.7.0 base release: stable, or at least stable enough for a .0 release.
  Overall I was happy with the stability of the 1.7 branch.

- 1.7-nominations branch: not necessary. Most of what I did was simply pull
  1.7-nominations into 1.7 and tag the release. The same could be done by
  working on the 1.7 branch directly. I don't think a -nominations branch is
  necessary for 1.8.

- Point releases: five weeks to a .x+1 release are a good timeframe, though
  the fortnightly RCs were a bit too fast given my other commitments and I
  couldn't always get the testing I wanted to before tagging. This is
  largely due to my reluctance to be late when I've announced on a release
  date. I'm also not sure how much exposure the tarballs had as opposed to
  the git branch.

Feel free to comment on the above and add your experience, _especially_ if
it was significantly different to mine. Based on the above, I'd like to try
the following approach this time:

- The server-1.8-branch will be created soon, branching off at 1.8.0. There
  won't be a 1.8-nominations branch.
- If you have changes for 1.8, please get them into master first (if
  appropriate). 
  To get a patch into 1.8, please follow the same process as for master,
  i.e. CC me on the _reviewed_ patch or (preferably) send me a pull request
  for the already-cherry-picked patches.

  The process for the latter is rather simple, on your local 1.8 branch just
  "cherry-pick -x" and then push to a "for-1.8" branch on your freedesktop
  repo. Please don't push to the server-1.8-branch directly.

This way we align the master/stable branch processes and hopefully get a bit
more compile-time and test exposure.

The releases will be in similar time-frames with one exception - the release
date is the cutoff date for changes. Hence, changes to 1.8.1 will have a
deadline roughly 5 weeks after 1.8.0, with the actual release coming out
a day or two after that. Because I'm on Australia time, I'll move the actual
cutoff date to (my) Monday, I've learned that releasing things on Friday and
disappearing into the weekend is not always the best idea.

That makes the 1.8.1 cutoff for May 10.

For this cycle I'm planning to do two RCs again - one after 3 weeks, one
shortly before the cutoff for a last set of emergency fixes and then the
final.

Thoughts, commments?

Cheers,
  Peter